Middlebury College

Middlebury has two-week trial access to the iPoll Databank from the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut, one of the world’s leading archives of social science data, specializing in data from public opinion surveys.

Searching on www.middlebury.edu

We have changed the way the search dialog works on the Middlebury website. Previously, if you searched for a term within a certain sub-set of GO shortcodes (ex. “coursehub”) we would forward you directly to the page for that GO term and show a green frameset bar at the top of your screen saying, “We think this is the right page for your search…”. This behavior caused several problems.

In order to get this to work for results on non-www.middlebury.edu websites, like Banner and the Course Hub, we have to use HTML framesets, which are a way to display two webpages at the same time in a single browser window. The green bar was one page and your search result was the other page. For security reasons, browsers don’t let one page talk to another.

If you kept browsing in your search result there wasn’t any way for us to automatically tell the green bar to go away, you had to manually close it. If you manually closed it after you’d left the main result page, you’d be redirected back to it without warning. Also, some dynamic features of sites, like Moodle’s editor, were breaking when displayed inside a frameset. This feature was a good idea when introduced in our website redesign five years ago, but was starting to show some strain.

Now, when you start typing in the search box you will see a list of possible GO shortcuts. Select one of those from the drop-down menu and you’ll go right to that page with no kludgy green bar. Or, if you prefer, press return or select the “Search for…” option, which will always be displayed first in the list, to go to a Google-powered search results page.

New Documentation

Google Analytics: details how to set up a custom segment to look at analytics for your department or office site and provides links to resources on using more advanced features of the Google Analytics platform.

Drupal Redirector: there are no new features of this content type, but it hadn’t been documented previously.

Updates

Tweaks and Fixes

The “Clicking on this image shows it full-size” checkbox in the dialog box you use to embed images in Drupal content is now working again. This will wrap the image in a link that opens a pop-out dialog window that displays the image at its full size, or scaled down so that it fits inside the browser window. See our Drupal File Upload documentation for more information on embedding images in content.

Animated gif images will now work when uploaded to Drupal, however, you must choose “Full content” when embedding them in content. If you allow Drupal to resize the image the processing that occurs will break the animation.

The “Meta tags” tab now appears correctly in the Drupal Page Settings form, so you can set meta tags and Open Graph tags at the page level. See our Drupal Meta Tags documentation for more information on using this feature.

The “Content Sidebar” region on the MIIS site now has 12px of padding on all sides and its content width has been reduced from 212px to 200px. This is to ensure that text doesn’t run up against the right side of the page.

The “Library Portal” content type has been deleted. This was used for a single piece of content, the “Library Quick Search” feature on the Library site, which is now in a Basic Content node.

In order to increase the resilience and reliability of our cloud platform we will be conducting network maintenance on 3/27/2015 between 12 a.m. and 5 a.m., EST. During this time sites will be unavailable for extended periods of time.

Updates

Drupal Webform 7.x-4.5 (from 7.x-3.23): We’re now using the newest release of the Webform module which includes better support for conditional rules, including the option of multiple condition checks to display a field. You can also require a “Preview Submission” page to be shown before the user submits the form. Note that if you have a form with conditional rules and your conditions skip the last page in the form the preview page will always be shown. This upgrade also resolves any issues with file upload on multi-page forms and issues with the conditional email feature when copying forms.

Tweaks and Fixes

Images in the Drupal File Upload content are now wrapped in a link to the full-sized image. Note that the “Clicking on this image shows it full-size” checkbox when embedding an image is still not working.

The comment form on Drupal News items on the Middlebury site now includes a comment policy and the unnecessary Subject field has been removed to improve the display of comments.

Drupal Promotional Calendars on pages with empty sidebars now take up the full width of the content region, rather than being confined to 450px.

The Middlebury 404 page is no longer showing extraneous navigation elements and has the correct margins on the text that is shown.

Related videos are no longer shown for any YouTube embeds in Drupal.

The Google Analytics code on the Middlebury Drupal site has been updated to allow links to “securelb.imodules.com” (the online giving form) to track as though they were hosted on our domain.

Google Analytics on the MIIS forms site will now track clicks on form page buttons as discrete events, showing “Page 1 of 3″, for example, when a user clicks on the first page button on a multi-page form.

If you are asked to help a campus visitor who would like to use our wireless network, don’t panic! Read on to learn how you can save the day… as well as help other visitors plan ahead.

A guest is on campus NOW and doesn’t have a Middlebury guest account. What should they do?

For now, the quickest route for visitors who did not create a Middlebury guest account before arriving on campus (or who created one but forgot their account password) is to connect using our Midd-standard wireless network. Contact the Technology Helpdesk (802.443.2200) to obtain the password.

I know someone who is planning a campus visit. How can I make their experience easier?

The smoothest route is to have guests follow these instructions to create a guest account prior to their arrival on campus. When they arrive on campus, they’ll simply select the MiddleburyCollege wireless network on their device then supply their guest account credentials to connect.

What can guests do LATER ON, when the new GuestAccountCreation wireless network is available?

After the GuestAccountCreation wireless network is available, visitors who did not create a guest account in advance will be able to follow these instructions to create a guest account from on campus. (Do you have frequent visitors? Here’s a handy cheat sheet you can share!)

Please note that the GuestAccountCreation wireless network is NOT yet available; we are hoping to proceed with its launch during spring break. Stay tuned for updates.

You may have noticed that no changes to our wireless networks took place yesterday (3/16). We are giving people more time to switch from Midd-standard to the new MiddleburyCollege network. If you haven’t already done so, please take this opportunity to connect your wireless devices to MiddleburyCollege. If you encounter any difficulties, contact the Technology HelpDesk for assistance.

The following wireless networks are currently available:
* MiddleburyCollege is the new, fast, and secure wireless network. A Middlebury username and password or guest account is required.
* MCPSK is the new wireless network for the limited devices that cannot connect to the MiddleburyCollege network, including the following: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo DS, Kindle, and Nook.
* Midd-standard continues to be available to provide wireless access to campus visitors.
* The eduroam network is available for guests from participating institutions who don’t have Middlebury credentials.